On Friday, Georgia Judge Scott McAfee rejected a motion to disqualify Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting Donald Trump and other defendants in her 2020 election interference case. Within hours, Nathan Wade, one of Willis’ three special prosecutors and her romantic partner, resigned from the case, as the decision essentially compelled him to do.
McAfee was unsparing in his criticism of Willis and Wade’s testimony and of their serious lapses of judgment. But what matters most in McAfee’s decision is what it shows about his devotion to legal principles, not what it means for Willis and Wade.
Indeed, if anyone needs evidence of the rule of law’s powerful force, look no further than Judge McAfee’s exemplary 26-page decision.
After hearing two and a half days of testimony, the judge did what the law required and ruled “that the Defendants failed to meet their burden of proving that the District Attorney acquired an actual conflict of interest in this case through her personal relationship and recurring travels with her lead prosecutor.”
The court went on to recognize, however, that the record established an appearance of impropriety. That required, the court said, that Willis had to let Wade go as a special prosecutor if she wanted to continue prosecuting the case.
By giving Willis an option, the court did more than what judges often do in “splitting the baby.” In fact, metaphorically speaking, he saved the baby – the case against Trump – and "the mother" from herself. He told Willis to do what she should have done long ago without any push from a court.
Here are five key takeaways from McAfee’s decision.
1. The sideshow is gone. The allegations of a conflict of interest on Willis’s part were always meant as distractions – Trump’s brand – from the subject of the case: The allegation that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election. He has denied culpability.
Pending any further legal action, we can now all get back to the real issue: holding Trump to account for his effort to end the lawful transfer of power to President Joe Biden.
2. A lesson for Supreme Court Justices. There are justices on the United States Supreme Court who could learn a thing or two from Judge McAfee about calling balls and strikes in an impartial and even handed way.
Like six of the justices on the Supreme Court, Judge McAfee was appointed by a Republican. Yet, unlike most or all of them, he refused to cater to Trump’s manipulation of the legal process in an effort to avoid his day of reckoning in court.
Just last month, the Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court were likely the ones who greenlighted that manipulation by agreeing to hear Trump’s frivolous claim to presidential immunity, thereby delaying Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference prosecution in DC.
In Georgia, after hearing every piece of testimony McAfee determined that Trump and his fellow defendants did not prove that the District Attorney received “a material financial benefit as a result of her decision to hire and engage in a romantic relationship.”
He also found that even if Willis got some financial gain by hiring Wade, it was not “a motivating factor . . . to indict and prosecute this case.” Similarly, he found a failure on Trump’s part to “demonstrate that the District Attorney’s conduct has impacted or influenced the case to the Defendants’ detriment.”
Ultimately, the plain and simple motivation for the Fulton County grand jury’s indictment was the evidence it heard about the conspiracy to interfere with Georgia’s election. That evidence included Trump’s infamous Jan. 2, 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than needed to overturn Biden’s win in the state.
3. A model “fair and balanced” opinion. Administering the rule of law impartially requires dispassionate decision-making. Judge McAfee evidenced that quality by acknowledging and considering evidence unfavorable to his decision.
For example, his opinion recounts that DA Willis kept no ledger of her reimbursements to Wade for expenses he initially paid for her, and that the amounts she claimed for those repayments were “best guesstimates.” By doing so, McAfee showed how a judge can assure the litigants and the public that he considered every fact presented.
As McAfee wrote, “Whether this case ends in convictions, acquittals, or something in between, the result should instill confidence in the process.”
4. A clarion call to prosecutors. Judge McAfee’s opinion also called out some “unpersuasive” testimony from Wade, Willis and others as part of his determination that a significant appearance of impropriety had arisen. He stated unequivocally that he could not condone DA Willis’ “lapse in judgment [and] the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing.”
For prosecutors, as McAfee once was, the opinion sings in perfect pitch about their special responsibilities to the judicial system:
[P]rosecutors are held to a unique and exacting professional standard in light of their public responsibility. . . [They] must seek justice . . . [and] assume a role beyond a mere advocate for one side and must make decisions in the public’s interest – not their own personal or political interest.
Of course, prosecutors make mistakes like anyone. In the Georgia case, defendants identified errors that called the conduct of a prosecutor into question. The district attorney’s responsibility in that situation is to remedy the error immediately and end a story that could distract from a powerfully indicted case. That could easily have happened early here, but Willis chose a different course.
5. The case must proceed expeditiously. With the sideshow behind her, Willis needs to press for a trial that reaches a jury before November’s election. Before they cast their ballots this fall, voters deserve to know the whole story of what Trump and his co-conspirators did in Georgia and if they violated the law.
In fact, a decision from Judge McAfee earlier this week streamlining the case could help expedite it.
He dismissed lesser charges against Trump and his defendants, leaving undisturbed the chief count against them – the 20-year racketeering conspiracy charge of attempting to overturn the election.
As former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen said on Friday, “If I were Fani Willis . . . on Monday I would move to either renew the August [trial start-date] request she’s made, or go even sooner . . . .”
Whether she can accomplish that end remains to be seen. But what McAfee did on Friday stands out as an important reminder of what the law offers: fairness, impartiality and scrupulous attention to evidence.
If we value those things, we will have to stand up for them when we go to the polls in November. We will have to recognize that our freedom and way of life depends on the kind of fidelity to law that Judge McAfee displayed and that Donald Trump dishonors.
No one is above the law.
